


familiar strangers

by crazyache



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyache/pseuds/crazyache
Summary: In which death keeps crossing paths with Katara. She never fails to surprise.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	familiar strangers

**Author's Note:**

> The narrator is entirely based on Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief" but with the Spirit World.

I’ve never had a name.

Only a deep fascination. With the dichotomy of mortals—the way they fear absolutely nothing and everything. Their wide-eyed hunger for darkness and relentless drive for goodness. The carnage their bodies leave behind, yet how fragile their souls feel in my arms. They cling to such a short existence. But most of all, their final breaths are what captivates me most.

No, I don’t have a name, only an infinite duty.

In fact, I suppose it is this fascination that brought me to this thankless job. Ever since I have not stopped. I have carried so many souls in my arms from the physical world to the other world—their final destination among the world of spirits. What happens beyond is not for me to know. I am their bridge, their personal escort, and sometimes, their only company in the end. If I stopped, who would care to guide them?

There has recently been a 100 year long war ravaging on the humans.

As you can guess, I have been very busy and I am very tired.

* * *

In the last century, the souls have mostly been a blur. An unforgiving routine of bending over to grab remnants of what has been left, over and over again—and sometimes this job feels more like an impossible curse. More, war asks. More and more and more. The only difference is the color of their clothes or perhaps the changes in the landscape. The fear on their face is always the same thread throughout. Yet another scream smothers the air.

There was one moment I do remember clearly amidst it all. It was one small girl.

She was screaming for her mother.

The cries from this small child made me stand up straight and look down at the soul in my arms, something I hadn’t had the time to do in ages. There had always been another body, another sigh of life escaping, another bloodshed.

This one was light, I noticed. There is a common misconception that the weight of a soul must be similar to the body—a child must be incredibly light, a solider is heavy. It has nothing to do with their corpse. Lightness is readiness. Heaviness is resistance. Despite the screaming at the entrance of the tent, I could only hear the swallow in my throat. It had become so familiar that I had forgotten its visceral touch in my arms—a mother’s sacrifice. It was the kind of soul that seemed to wait for me to arrive, that sat up and reached out with relief.

I looked at the reason why.

Small, blue-eyed girl. I blinked at her grief-torn face, wailing at the red-stained blue body at my feet. I noticed the crunch of snow, the waves beating against ice. I wanted to reach out and tell the waterbender about how her mother was so calm in her last moments, so steadfast and sure. There was a tug on my sleeve. A reminder that strength had its limits and any longer she would change her mind.

Many souls were picked up that day. From the corner of my eye, I followed the little girl and hoped to not see her again soon.  
  


* * *

How foolish for me to hope.

She grew, always familiar, with the same wide blue eyes. I returned to her village several more times. Too many times, it was a small child in her arms, only a glimmer of a soul inside. Born to die. Was it my imagination or did she learn to pass it over, so gently and carefully, as if afraid to disturb its permanent slumber? Perhaps it was.

I still thought of her mother—unafraid and consumed by the care of others.

_Oh._

That sounded a little too familiar.  
  


* * *

I am never late, but sometimes I arrive too early.

A sudden crash. A very heavy soul masked by a lie.

_Don't worry, Katara. I'll be fine._

I haven’t bothered to learn many names, but this one sounds like those waves against the ice, like rain being wrung from clothes, like the softest footsteps running in snow. It’s harder to forget.

* * *

He is falling to the ground, and I am below, waiting with open arms.

When I turn to face a tidal wave, she is there. _Of course she is._ The waterbender beats me to the Avatar’s body, her grip on his skin-tight with white knuckles. I know that burden she carries is heavy—the Avatar’s soul is always the heaviest with a thousand lives linked to this corporal one. This one especially…even from where I stand, his soul is tangled with years not lived and a destiny still unfinished, a heart not ready, still shaking with the surprise of attack. Her strength is admirable.

If she had been able to see me, I think she would have bared her teeth.

I lingered, briefly. The moon tells me to leave, _it is not time._ The girl, Katara, heals a new breath into the Avatar’s chest. I feel a strange shudder in my throat. I am rarely wrong. She surprises me, again.

* * *

_  
Please._

Here we are once again. Very rarely do I allow mortals to plead with me. Sometimes there is just enough life in their soul that if I do not pull very hard, I can very well walk away. But sometimes…with resolved judgment, I curl them into my arms and carry them anyway. Call it mercy. A soft tenderness for the mortals. 

This time, it feels like she is looking straight at me. I know she can’t, but I believe her.

 _Not again,_ I reply. She won the Avatar and now she clings to the battered prince. Half a soul in my arms, I can feel all his brokenness, can smell burnt flesh from every scar, the bitter loneliness. I want to be kind to this one. _You can’t keep winning,_ I tell her.

Her water isn’t special this time, just simple drain water desperately holding the scarred boy together. Looking at those wide blue eyes, I feel something else stir in my arms with realization—sacrifice. Still singed, aching from lightning. How odd…how familiar.

I found myself wanting to tell the waterbender many things, about beauty and destruction, about how mortals cannot exist without both, but what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to tell her that when he held the lightning to his chest, he was calm, steadfast and sure in his decision. But he is clinging to her. I think she knows this just as much as I do.

_Please._

This isn’t about winning. For the first time, I can see she is afraid. Perhaps she always has been.

With a sigh, I give in, and let his soul slide back into her hands. His eyes crack open and I hear that name again. She smiles, and with that I am able to rise to my feet. A war is ending in the red smeared horizon, and I find myself hoping again—for a moment to finally breathe again. This has always been about losing and not losing. There is a difference that only mortals can understand and that I am beginning to see.  
  


* * *

I meet the Avatar again decades later. An Avatar’s soul is not like other mortals—it does not need to be carried and will not rest with the others. We are closer in kind. He must find his own way back to the other world. I extend a hand, and this one reaches up to accept my offer. For the briefest moment, it requires the most strength I can conjure to lift the heaviest and oldest soul from his now discarded self.

And just as quickly, he is standing next to me. He sees me looking at the blue-eyed girl quietly crying, and looks back at her,

“She wouldn’t let me go,” he whispers. I know that. I have always known that.

It’s time to go.  
  


* * *

  
I come for so many of her loved ones, and I am almost sorry. It is difficult to be apologetic in my line of work, but for her brother, almost. Under different circumstances, I wish we could have been strangers. Life always leads to death. _To me._ I promise I am nothing but most gentle. I leave quickly because when I look at her, I only see the little girl from the ice again.

* * *

This was a familiar face. When I come for him, he is tentative, afraid of the other side, of the judgment. He knows he was never supposed to have this second chance. He settles into my arms with a deep long, last breath. How different this death than the first—but she is there, of course.

She is holding his lifeless hand, and I pause, to listen to her speak (to confess).

“I have hated you and loved you, Zuko. I have felt everything for you.”

_Everything._

I know a little something about everything. Mortals only live a fraction of a life and can only see what is front of them. For humans to believe they can grasp the entirety of everything is unreasonable, but that is just another reason I can never tear myself away from helping them. Their optimism against the vastness of darkness is, as always, admirable. 

* * *

There is so much blue surrounding her when it is her time. This brings me great comfort, to meet her where it started. The snow, the ice, the cold is a constant. I sit by her side, and it wakes her from her sleep. She recognizes me. So many years on her face, yet our history was just seconds in my lifetime.

I am scooping her into my arms, and for a moment there is resistance. I had never imagined what she would feel like—it is heavier than I anticipated. When I look down at her, there are so many pieces of souls inside hers. It makes me smile. I feel salvation. And grace. And sorrow. For every instance we crossed paths, someone found a place safe with her.

She has been carrying souls this entire time.

With only one last opportunity, I wanted to ask her how she could have so much strength until the end? When the end is hopeless, miserable, never changing, and inevitable? I am so tired. How did a little blue-eyed girl challenge the fates and demand anything different so many times? For all that morals are damned, how was she still unafraid?

Nothing comes out of my mouth. A small cry falls from the back of her throat. “No, they need—”

Fascination has never been the right word for what I feel for mortals. Amazed. _Amazed._

She is fighting me again. It wouldn’t have been right if she hadn’t. _They need me._ I remind her yes, they are waiting for her, elsewhere. I am not sure if this is true, but for the first time, I decide to be a little more human and lie. It is time to rest. It is time for goodbye.

I look back before leaving, but there is no one there, and I am haunted.


End file.
